Industry News

The idea started on an empty alley lot in Northeast Washington's little-known Stronghold neighborhood. Brian Levy wanted to show those around him the benefits of minimal and environmentally friendly living. So in 2012, he enlisted an architecture firm and builder to construct a 210-square-foot house on wheels - a particularly chic structure with stainless-steel kitchen countertops and maple floors.

San Francisco and other large American cities are facing a massive housing affordability problem, with rents spiraling beyond the reach of ordinary people. A fascinating article from the Financial Times argues that Japan may have found a solution to the problem.

There is not enough affordable housing in the United States. For every 100 extremely low income households, there are only 29 adequate, affordable, and available rental units. That means two parents who both work minimum-wage jobs might wait years to find a safe, affordable place to live with their two kids.

Planners call them Accessory Dwelling Units-plus the inevitable acronym, ADUs. What they mean are the granny flats and in-law apartments sprinkled throughout cities and towns across the land, the finished basements, above-garage studios, rehabbed carriage houses, and other outbuildings on parcels generally zoned for single-family homes.

For years, Gov. Jerry Brown has resisted efforts to spend more money to build affordable housing. As part of his revised budget released Friday, Brown announced what he said was a better solution: making it easier to build homes for low-income residents.

To borrow Mr. Hobbs's metaphor, the law has created an affordable housing arms race. And it was one of New Canaan's own who launched the first salvo. Charles Berman, a resident and real estate executive experienced in wrangling with local ordinances, started Avalon Properties (later known as AvalonBay) in 1993.

Some of the most sought-after cities in the U.S. face a growing affordability crunch. While San Francisco and New York are known for especially high housing costs, places such as Seattle, Boston and Washington are finding more people priced out.

From Zillow and Amazon to Fuse IQ and Seattle In Progress, tech companies large and small are stepping up to help address some of the challenges of the Seattle region's affordable housing and homelessness crisis. Housing advocates, elected leaders and many in the software industry agree that the tech sector bears some responsibility for working on housing solutions.

THE world's great cities are engines of wealth creation. Places like London and San Francisco account for a disproportionate share of economic output. They are the combustion chambers in which ideas and capital are combined to generate new riches. To an alarming extent, such cities are also playgrounds for the rich-and only the rich.